TIME Magazine recently released its inaugural ranking of the top 80 startup incubators and accelerators in the United States, which included The Garage at Northwestern University.
The Garage was ranked No. 5 on TIME Magazine’s list, behind New York’s TechStars, Massachusetts’ MassChallenge, Florida’s Tampa Bay Wave and California’s Y Combinator. The list included six organizations that are headquartered in Illinois, with The Garage being the highest-ranked of them. The other Illinois-headquartered organizations that were included on TIME Magazine’s list are The Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (No. 7), mHUB (No. 14), the University of Illinois Research Park (No. 27), MATTER (No. 61) and 1871 (No. 63).
In order to be eligible for the list, organizations had to be created before 2022, be located in the United States, and offer at least one incubation or acceleration program. TIME Magazine received applications from eligible organizations and invited potential candidates to apply.
To compile the ranking, TIME Magazine combined alumni surveys, recommendations from startup investors and entrepreneurs, and information about the most successful startups that the organization has worked with. General alumni recommendations were weighted at 40%, alumni responses about certain aspects of the organization’s work counted for 45%, information about the organization’s most successful startups were weighted at 10%, and startup investors and entrepreneurs’ recommendations counted for 5%.
Incubators and accelerators are similar to venture capital firms, but they play a larger role in the startup’s development. Startup companies receive knowledge and support from incubators and accelerators, not only money. Accelerators may also have specific topic areas that they focus on, such as technology or the environment.
Since its founding in 2015, The Garage has helped over 1,500 startup companies that have raised more than $1.6 billion in funding and created over 2,600 jobs. Each academic year, The Garage works with over 2,000 students, including about 40 residency teams per academic quarter. The organization does not receive any equity in students’ companies and is open to scholars from any major.
